• John Deere to Pay $99 Million in Monumental Right-to-Repair Settlement: The ag manufacturing giant will also make digital diagnostic, maintenance, and repair tools available to third parties for 10 years. [...] Ripple effects of this battle have been felt far beyond the sales floors at John Deere dealers, as the price of used equipment skyrocketed in response to the infamous service difficulties. Even when the cost of older tractors doubled, farmers reasoned that they were still worth it because repairs were simpler and downtime was minimized. $60,000 for a 40-year-old machine became the norm. With that second quote in mind, ten years isn't long for farm equipment so this is arguably a win for John Deere who just had to kick the can a little. Also John Deere had a bit over $5b revenue in 2025, so $99m is 'rap on the knuckles' stuff.
• The AI Great Leap Forward: In 1958, Mao ordered every village in China to produce steel. Farmers melted down their cooking pots in backyard furnaces and reported spectacular numbers. The steel was useless. The crops rotted. Thirty million people starved. In 2026, every other company is having top down mandate on AI transformation. Same energy. [...] A drag-and-drop canvas makes it trivially easy to chain ten LLM calls together and impossibly hard to debug why the eighth one hallucinates on Tuesdays. The people building these workflows have never designed an evaluation pipeline, never measured model drift, never A/B tested a prompt. They don’t need to — the canvas looks clean, the arrows point forward, the green checkmarks fire. The complexity isn’t avoided. It’s hidden behind a GUI where nobody with ML expertise will ever look. The backyard steel of 1958 looked like steel. It was not steel. Today’s backyard AI looks like AI. It is not AI. Interesting take on the impact of top-down AI mandates.
• 3 sentenced after bear costume used in $142K luxury car insurance scam | AP News: Three people in California have been sentenced for insurance fraud in a bizarre scam that involved someone dressed in a bear costume damaging luxury cars. (if it wasn't on AP News...)
• Today in history, April 19: Good News Week premiered 30 years ago - ABC News: That April 1996 episode kicked off nine seasons. In 1997, the show picked up an average of 750,000 viewers nationally. In 2010, McDermott even landed a Gold Logie nomination as the show copped an average of just under a million viewers a week. I still miss GNW.
• ARN reveals $22m drop in advertising because of Kyle and Jackie O Show content | Radio | The Guardian. Everything about this situation is bizarre. They were losing so much money, ARN must have been looking for any possible way out.
• Yindjibarndi people win $150m compensation after Andrew Forrest's Fortescue mines built without permission - ABC News: The four huge open-pit mines were built without the agreement of the traditional owners and have generated tens of billions of dollars in revenue for the company since production began in 2013, with billions more expected before the mine is set to close in the mid-2040s. ...meaning $150m is truly nothing to Fortescue.
• Tesla recalls some Cybertrucks over fears the wheels will fall off: report - EVSHIFT
• Tribunal's first refusal of a pet in rental since Tasmanian laws changed - ABC News: The tribunal found that even if the landlord approved the request to keep an animal on the premises, it would have "no practical effect" because the body corporate had denied permission. [...] Acting principal solicitor at the Tenants' Union of Tasmania, Alex Bomford, said he wasn't surprised by the tribunal's ruling. He said the union warned the government about the potential of this outcome when it was consulting with the public about the new laws. Anyone familiar with landlords or body corporates could have told you this is how it would go.
• Pizza Hut Faces Lawsuit From Franchisee Over AI System - Business Insider: Chaac alleges Pizza Hut failed to adequately train operators on the system, refused requests for support, and ignored worsening delivery metrics after sales began plunging in key markets. In New York City, the franchisee says year-over-year sales growth swung from positive 10.19% to negative 9.78% after the rollout.

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